Oakland: Forum spotlights Bay Area affordable housing crisis

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Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf addresses members of the media during a press conference about the Oakland Raiders at the City Hall in Oakland, Calif., on Tuesday, Dec. 29, 2015. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)

OAKLAND — For the past 46 years, Theola Polk has called California her home after leaving Arkansas at a time when segregation was still rampant.

At that time, threats from the Ku Klux Klan prompted her family to make the move to California, where she had family.

But now, the East Oakland resident says she is worried that her family may be displaced again by the escalating home prices and rental rates that are sweeping the Bay Area.

“I’m going to tell my story, but my story is just one of many,” Polk said to nearly 400 people who attended a Metropolitan Transportation Commission-backed affordable housing forum on Saturday at the Oakland Marriott City Center. “There are people in our audience who, like me, have struggled and fallen for homes and to stay in California — now they’re all at risk again.”

Polk is not alone.

Bay Area city officials and housing industry experts who spoke at the public forum acknowledged that several factors are contributing to the high housing costs that residents are seeing, including new home construction that has been unable to keep up with the region’s economic boom.

“This imbalance of just explosive economic growth without providing for the workers who are the backbone of our economy has put unbelievable stresses on our infrastructure, transportation systems, and have caused the cost of housing to spiral out of control,” said Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, who serves on the 21-member Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

Solutions, however, are as diverse as the nine counties and 101 municipalities that make up the Bay Area region.

“There is not a simple, one-side-or-the-other type of solution,” Carol Galante, the faculty director at UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation, said at the forum. “We have a perfect storm going on here: a lack of building; a building system that creates a lot of costliness, and surge in demand, especially in rental housing; and as you’ve heard, incomes that are stagnant or declining.”

She said two state laws have complicated the issue over the past few decades: the California Environmental Quality Act and Proposition 13. which restricted annual increases in property taxes.

“Those two things are our wall in California,” Galante said. “Part of that is the Environmental Quality Act, which was very well intended — don’t get me wrong — but looking at that has created this restrictive zoning situation in this state that exacerbates inequality, disturbs the economic vitality of the state and creates real income inequality. This is a problem that we can solve in California, but it will require tackling some things that people think of as third rails, and we need to do that.”

Building Industry Association of the Bay Area CEO Bob Glover said escalating construction fees and costs over the years have made it difficult to make affordable housing projects financially viable.

“We are at or near the tipping point of whether or not projects make economic sense just about everywhere in the Bay Area,” Glover said. “As you’ve seen, housing prices correct from time to time, they go up and down, but fees have just continued to escalate, and so have construction costs.”

He said more affordable housing initiatives may get a boost by bolstering federal and state funding; providing incentives to businesses; and reassessing transfer taxes and fees imposed on developers and employers.

Faith in Action Bay Area Executive Director Jennifer Martinez said pushing more just-cause-for-eviction and rent-stabilization measures, such as those that have been approved in Berkeley and San Francisco, could help prevent further gentrification and displacement throughout the region.

Berkeley resident Steve Martino said he believes in placing a moratorium on rental rate increases until more affordable housing can be built to assist moderate- and low-income residents.

Darin Moriki is a reporter for the Bay Area News Group's Silicon Valley Community Newspapers. He covers Hayward, Castro Valley, San Leandro and nearby unincorporated Alameda County areas for the Hayward Daily Review. He has worked for the organization since 2016. He has worked for four newspapers in three states since graduating in 2012 from the University of Oregon with his master's degree in journalism. His coverage includes the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan and the 2012 Aurora theater shooting in Colorado. Originally from Hawaii, he dreams of the warm ocean water lapping at his feet and the sand between his toes.

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